Hi Dark, Well, I have mixed feelings about what Justin is doing. While his actions may seem greedy he never made any claims to be giving these games away for charity. BSC Games and Blindsoftware.com have always been commercial ventures so in that light he is doing what any business person would do in his position which is trying to get as much money as he can off the products before he closes the business for good. When a store like Comp USA went out of business they didn't just open the doors and say take what you want. Instead all the computers, software, magazines, hard drives, and whatever else was in the store was marked down and sold as is. What Blindsoftware.com is doing is following that sort of end of store clearance sale which is pretty common.
On the other hand I think he is not being fair to his customers by selling them a piece of software without insuring long term compatibility or support. I feel if you aren't going to provide service and support for your products then you have no business taking money for it. That is totally different from buying a copy of Microsoft Windows or Microsoft Office from Comp USA at reduced prices because if the store goes out of business you can still register the software and get support from Microsoft,. Where with Blindsoftware.com you pay $75 with no support, no upgrades, and no assurance it will even work on future Windows versions unless you use a virtual machine. So while I understand his motivation well enough I do think it is wrong because you are essentially buying a bundle of software that is already out of date according to present technical standards, and will only get harder to support now that VB 6 is no longer officially supported by Microsoft Windows. While virtual machines will probably be a reasonable solution for the long term its still not as good as native support,and I think Justin could have served the community best by offering up the source code to another developer who could continue the work he started. Cheers! On 4/18/13, dark <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Tom. > > well as you know, you and I have very different schemas for upgrades. Myself > > I'd think of it the other way around, and if microsoft don't give me the > ability to play older programs like! the Bsc games, why should I upgrade my > > windows anyway? But we've had that conversation previously. > > What bothers me rather more is that the games will be unavailable to people > > in the future even when they do! do the compatibility thing, it just feels > like justin is being greedy and squeezing money out of the community for no > > need rather than trying to insure that his work stays around in the future. > > I might buy the bundle, but likely not until May, and I'd very much prefer > as pitermach said to have some sort of method of storing these communally > instead. > > Beware the grue! > > Dark. > > > --- > Gamers mailing list __ [email protected] > If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to > [email protected]. > You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at > http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. > All messages are archived and can be searched and read at > http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]. > If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, > please send E-mail to [email protected]. > --- Gamers mailing list __ [email protected] If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to [email protected]. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to [email protected].
